


symbiote

by agivise



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: horrific overuse of similes, overall dumb bitch energy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 15:49:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16043615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agivise/pseuds/agivise
Summary: misery loves company, as long as that company starts with ‘d’ and ends with ‘aniel kenneth jacobi’.





	symbiote

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't written any dumb prose shit for a while so here y'all go (this user loves daniel jacobi with all their heart)  
> today's song recs: now i want by son lux and walcott by vampire weekend

you feed off of grief the way mistletoe strangles the life out of a pine tree.

a lot of people forget that mistletoe is a parasite. a lot of people forget it isn’t quite as pretty when it’s killing something. a lot of people should really get to know you better before trusting you with their netflix password.

ultimately you use grief as fuel because it’s predictable, and predictability makes for lovely sustenance. you’re a fucked-up barely-person with a fucked-up barely-life. you can lap at the edges of your own self pity all you want. it’ll never go away, never run dry. 

you break down sobbing in the crayon-scratched corner of an arby’s bathroom stall, scrub the tears off your cheeks with a sheet of practically-steel-wool paper towel, and roll your eyes at your own reflection as you pass by the mirror. you look like a fucking dumbass.

rinse, repeat. maybe next time you’ll have your mental breakdown in a bath and bodyworks or a home depot or a really nice hotel lobby instead. good job, daniel. raise those standards. that’s the trick. that’s the fuel. that’s how you make it from one day to the next.

rinse, repeat. you trick a guy into punching you in the face so you can swipe his wallet without him noticing. he has one hundred and eighteen dollars in cash. you toss the cards in a dumpster and use the cash to buy yourself a new jacket to replace the one which, ironically enough, you wrecked with blood after you broke your nose getting punched in the face. it’s worth it, you decide, just for the satisfaction of knowing he’ll have to call his bank and cancel the cards.

rinse.

repeat.

misery loves company, as long as that company starts with ‘d’ and ends with ‘aniel kenneth jacobi’.

until you meet warren, by ‘chance’, by ‘coincidence’, in a bar, of all places. (to be honest, you were rooting for the home depot.) then, the only company misery loves is — no, no, wait, kepler’s still the misery in this metaphor, and he _ loooves _ your company. and your ability to deconstruct a pipe bomb in under twenty seconds. and your mouth. but also definitely your company.

the second he sees you, he drinks you in like a tick gorging itself on deer blood.

sometimes he makes you want to kill him.

_ mostly _ he makes you want to kill him.

you cut off a snake’s head and it dies. you cut off a hydra’s and it just gets stronger. he’s neither. he’s a tick. rip its head clean off its body and sure, it’s dead, but the problem’s still there.

(killing him just won’t do the trick.)

something about him looks familiar, when you see him that first time. something you just can’t put your finger on. it takes you two years of working with him to realize it’s because he reminds you of yourself. you’re both perpetual motion machines running on the fumes of whatever nasty, spiteful emotions you can get your hands on. but you’re not the villains here, right? parasitism is still symbiosis. slow predation, though, that’s a different thing entirely. but you don’t look much like prey.

alana is a serpent and a saviour all wrapped up in one.

she is the guardian of the nonliving. she is entirely unamused when you call her the robot version of a stygian ferryman, but you still see her smirking out of the corner of your eye when you tell her to go fuck a calculator instead of bothering you.

you’ve run into a handful of people in your life who’ve bragged, for no apparent reason, about being sad when puppies die in movies but not batting an eye when real people drop like flies.

alana’s like that, if you replace ‘puppies’ with ‘artificial intelligences which she will never convince you are even conscious, though she certainly still believes it to be the undeniable truth’.

that doesn’t quite roll of the tongue like ‘puppies’, though, so you just stick with the former when you try to explain her to people.

she’s at the top of the food chain the way a saprophyte is. your food is sorrow, sure, but hers is death, hers is decay. it’s a curious thing, really. she’s killed more people than you have, but you’ve never seen her kill her victims with her hands like you usually do with yours.

warren’s at the top of the food chain the way god is for gracing man with gunpowder.

but basically —

the point is —

alana and warren won’t ever leave you. you love them, and they love you. you need them, and they need you. symbiosis is a sweet-tasting poison.

and it’s not exactly like they’ll just up and die. gods don’t die.

(gods don’t die unless you kill them.)

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos keep me going


End file.
